Happy Endings
by Beth Einspanier
Summary: A newly resurrected Severus Snape finds himself in a post-War world where everything has apparently been made right, thanks to a new Ravenclaw student. However, something about this happy ending feels horribly wrong...
1. Chapter 1

Severus Snape opened his eyes. The first thing he saw was the ceiling of the Hogwarts infirmary, which matched well with the smells of various potions and liniments that typically populated this department, as well as the soft cotton sheets he currently lay between. He remembered being dead. It was hard to forget being struck over and over again by the serpent Nagini at her master's command, and feeling the horrible burning pain of her venom coursing through his veins, destroying his tissues. The last things that slipped through his mind as consciousness mercifully faded were satisfaction that he'd done what was needed, and a last, fleeting thought of Lily Evans.

Lily _Potter_, he corrected himself. She had died the brief widow of James Potter, protecting their son Harry.

He wasn't sure what had happened; Nagini's venom was so potent that even if there was a cure there was no way it could have reached him in time. As it was, he didn't even have the residual ache that followed a standard detoxification remedy, just a sensation of purging in the recent past.

Well, Poppy Pomfrey should be nearby, in any case. This was her domain, and accordingly she would know what was going on. He sat up with a bit of effort and glanced around. He didn't see Poppy anywhere. Odd.

In the heels of this, he became aware of something else, something wrong with _himself_. He pulled back the covers and looked down. He was still as lean as had always been-adolescence was never kind to wizards like himself-but now his chest and abdomen were corded with taut muscle. He was never a Quidditch champion. In fact, the only exercise he'd ever gotten was tring to get away from the Marauders, when he wasn't developing spells and charms to discourage them entirely. He was still pale though, which was something.

"Good mroning!" chirped an unfamiliar female voice as its owner, a sixteen-year-old girl in Ravenclaw robes entered the infirmary. Instinctively, Snape snatched the covers back around himself as he studied her.

Her hair was the colour of flames shot with metallic silver streaks, cascading down her back like a flow of lava and easily reaching to the back of her knees. Her eyes gleamed like emerald orbs, but even from halfway across the room he could see the silver flecks in them. Her face was parfectly heart-shaped, with smooth skin that had never known the ravages of acne, and perfect lips the exact pink colour of roses. She was tall and statuesque, with an athletic figure enhanced rather than hindered by a pair of bosoms that suggested she'd crammed two cantaloupes down the front of her robes. Seeing that he was awake, she smiled, flashing her perfectly straight, white teeth at him. She looked exactly like the sort of person who would greet someone with "Good mroning" and not think anything was wrong.

"You're awake!" she chirped, "I knew it was only a matter of time."

"Who are you?" he demanded, and though it hardly seemed plausible, her smile broadened.

"I'm Andromeda Merlina Francesca Tiffany Morningstar Brighteyes," she replied.

He closed his eyes and grimaced. _Bloody hell_, he thought, _one of __**those**_.

"I'm so glad you're awake," Andromeda continued, "Now you can see all the good I've done since I got here. I bet you'll want to get dressed first, though."

"Where _did_ you come from?" he asked. The Ravenclaws were his best students, academically, and he was sure he would have recognized someone like _that_.

"I'm a half-veela exchange student from America," she said.

He cringed. There _were_ no veela in the States. In any case, he'd seen half-veela children, and while they were indeed overwhelmingly female, they _didn't bloody look like that_.

"I got here just in time, too," she continued, fetching his robes from a closet, "Do you have any idea how many people would have died in that war?"

"The War's been going for over a year," Snape protested, "People have _already_ died. _Including me_."

Oh yeah," she said, "I found you all crumpled and tragic and almost dead in the Astronomy Tower and I brought you back to life."

She handed over his clothing, but the bundle just fell through his boneless fingers.

"You. What."

"Oh, looks like you're still not quite better yet," she cooed, retrieving his clothing from the floor and placing it on his lap. "My mom gave me an heirloom spell before I came here, and told me that it was only for emergencies. I didn't know what it would do, but I used it on you and it cleaned all the poison out of your system and brought you back to life! Who knew?"

No wonder he felt vaguely like he'd recently shat himself into unconsciousness. He was starting to develop a headache, though.

"After I brought you back to life, I went out onto the battlefield and called out Voldemort."

"_Why_?" He asked not because he wanted to know her reason, but because it had been shocked out of him. Nobody would be stupid enough to just _arrive_ at Hogwarts and immediately try to call out Voldemort - with the possible exceptuion of...

"Because I knew that if someone just showed him love and compassion that he wouldn't be evil anymore."

Snape rubbed his throbbing forehead. "And you were that someone?" he asked flatly. Voldemort didn't understand love. He didn't understand the point of being willing to sacrifice yourself so that someone else might live. He wasn't _capable_ of understanding it, and this had only gotten worse as me made Horcruxes in his search for immortality. He'd willingly turned himself into a soulless monster, and -

"Of course I was!" she chirped, "After all, my veela blood allows me to make anyone I want fall in love with me."

"_That's not the same thing!_" Snape exploded. Magically induced love wasn't real. That was how the whole thing _started_ with Tom Riddle.

"Of course it is!" she retorted, with the surety of someone too dense to see other points of view. "And once I showed him what true love was, his shattered soul was restored to wholeness and now he's all better!"

Snape groaned. There were so many things wrong with that statement that his brain wanted to escape out his ears and go hide under the bed.

"Excuse me," he said, "but I need some privacy while I dress."

"No problem, Severus! Once you're done I can show you how happy everyone is now that everythings all better!"

With that she skipped out the door and shut it behind her.

Snape rubbed his forehead, hoping to ease the headache that was blossoming there. Sixteen-year-old girls didn't go hoppity-skip unless they were on drugs.

He got dressed, occasionally having to push back hair that was suddenly a lot longer and silkier than it ever had been, without a trace of grease, and trying very hard to ignore the fact that he now had the build of an Olympic swimmer. He would have to look in the mirror eventually. The fact that his Dark Mark was gone was not really all that surprising, considering he'd died _no matter what she tried to tell him_, but the fact that he didn't even have any scarring from the multiple snake bites was troubling. He usually didn't pay any attention to his appearance, but now he had to weigh his usual practical habits with the possibility that things had been meddled with. He would have to see what he was dealing with. He finished buttoning up his frockcoat, shrugged into his outer robe, and turned to face the mirror.

He was handsome.

He didn't possess the sort of universal beauty that might make men forget their heterosexuality, but he had the sort of eye-pleasing charisma that he could have used to get his female students to pay more attention to their lessons. In all, he looked like an actor in the Muggle cinema.

Alan Rickman, age thirty, perhaps. With the sort of hair you'd see in a shampoo advertisement.

He shook his head. He wasn't supposed to look like this. He wasn't the dashing Potions Master with the voice that could make women swoon by reading off Flamel's Fifth Theory of Transmutation. And the hair - no self-respecting Potions Master could maintain silky-smooth, waist-length hair like this without taking away from his research or being Gilderoy Lockhart.

Well, he supposed it was about time to find out what else had changed since he'd died. Sort of died. Died-ish.

He opened the Infirmary door and saw Andromeda Merlina Francesca Tiffany Morningstar Brighteyes waiting for him, her broad grin still nailed onto her face.

"You look so dapper!" she gushed, and, ignoring his grimace of distaste, grabbed his hand (his elegant pianist's fingers now free of potion stains or old burn scars) and pulled him down the hallway. It wasn't so much that she was strong - something about her made him want to follow along. Perhaps it was an attraction charm that she had cast on herself. Had he been prepared for this he might have been able to fight it off and dig in his heels, but he resolved not to be caught off-guard next time.

However, he had no time to plan this further, as they presently reached the door to the Great Hall (which he had sworn was further away from the Infirmary), and she threw the doors open to reveal a crowd of witches and wizards, young and old alike, were gathered there. He saw people that he knew for a fact had died during the War alive and well, as well as many people he couldn't help but feel shouldn't still be alive nonetheless.

The sprawling Weasley clan sat in a red-haired cluster at the table nearest them, save for Ginny Weasley sitting slightly closer than conversational distance to Neville Longbottom while they discussed herbology. Harry Potter and Hermione Granger sat just over there, right across from Ron Weasley and Lavender Brown. Over there, Draco Malfoy discreetly made out with Pansy Parkinson, while in yet another direction Nymphadora Tonks (her hair a happy shade of pink) and Remus Lupin were discussing something while he rubbed her abdomen protectively. Minerva McGonagall was talking not to Voldemort but to the promising wizard that Voldemort had once been, Tom Riddle, now a well-adjusted adult with a full head of hair and a nose since he'd been redeemed.

Everything was fixed. Everything was resolved. Everyone was happy. Everyone was smiling.

His observation of this last point sent a chill up his spine. Every single person in the room, mo matter what they had done, no matter what they had just experienced up to this point, was grinning broadly from ear to ear.

Andromeda Merlina Francesca Tiffany Morningstar Brighteyes had made everything right. Yet everything was Wrong. Not just wrong but Wrong. Albus-Dumbledore-dancing-the-can-can Wrong.

Suddenly McGonagall noticed the two of them and broke off her conversation with Riddle to approach them.

"Severus!" she greeted him, "I see you've met the Savior of Hogwarts."

"I have," he acknowledged cautiously. McGonagall's smile was getting unnerving.

"Everything's been resolved so decisively," she said, "I couldn't have expected one witch, especially one so young, to fix things up so tidily, considering the chaos that had nearly engulfed the British Isles."

"Indeed," he replied, marking his possible escape routes. "It almost boggles the mind."

"And you're looking much better as well - just in time for you to meet someone very special. Lily?"

Ice went down Snape's spine as the woman he had always loved approached him with the same smile on her face. He remembered her smile to be beautiful and comforting when they were young, but now it only added to the sense of Wrongness.

"Lily…" he gasped, "But… you're…"

"I found a way to bring her back," Andromeda said, "I got a lot of talent from my mother's side. I wasn't able to bring James back, but he was horrible anyway so it's all okay."

Lily Potter, nee Evans, approached Snape and cupped his face in her hands. He closed his eyes, having long craved the opportunity to feel her touch him, just once, in a way that didn't involve a slap to the face.

"I've always loved you," she said quietly, "And I forgive you for calling me a Mudblood." She kissed him, and her lips felt as soft as rose petals against his mouth. It was like every single thing that had gone wrong had been made right. He could live forever like this.

Andromeda spoke, breaking through his bliss.

"Aren't you happy, Severus? Everything's the way it should be."

He opened his eyes and glanced over at her, noticing as he did so that everybody in the Great Hall had stopped talking, and had turned to stare directly at him, grinning steadily all the while.

"You should be happy, Severus," McGonagall affirmed, but above her grin he noticed the rest of her expression, the part in her eyes that was untouched by her apparent happiness. While her mouth smiled on and on like the world would never end, her eyes held a look of sheer terror.

"I _am_ happy," he tried to reassure her, his heart hammering.

"You don't _look_ happy," Andromeda chided perkily. The others in the Great Hall continued to grin at him like dolls.

"Severus," Lily whispered against his cheek as she hugged him, a wavering edge to her voice, "What's going on?"

His eyes locked onto Andromeda, whose grin was starting to remind him of a tiger's.

"I don't know," he murmured back, "But I intend to find out."

"There's nothing to be sad about," Andromeda said, and there were razors in her voice. "You. Should. Be. Happy."

It wasn't a suggestion.

It wasn't an offer.

It was an obligation.

It was a command.

It was a mandate.

He forced his mouth into a smile, on the near-certainty that it was either that or get torn apart. He knew how _pissy_ veelas could get if they didn't get their way.

"Ah. Yes. Of course." Snape desperately grinned wider, using muscles that hadn't gotten much exercise since his school days. "You've done… well. Very well." It was praise that he'd only given to his very best Potions students, and it made him queasy to offer it to her - but he would have to keep her distracted while he found out what the hell had happened while he was… indisposed.

The fact that he didn't see Dumbledore anywhere in the Great Hall suggested that perhaps even her powers had limits. This was a relief, honestly; he would probably have gone crazy if he'd seen Albus in the Happy Happy Club grinning like a moron.

His stomach twisted, all the same. Getting Lily back was a dream come true, as were the apparent resurrections of several of his colleagues and students, but it felt blasphemous somehow. He needed to get back to the Dungeon so he could properly investigate, but he wasn't about to leave Lily there. There had been something in her voice…

"Headmistress McGonagall is throwing a party in my honor!" Andromeda chirped further, "Everyone's invited, even you, Severus! It will be such a wonderful celebration!"

"Actually, I need to, uh…" he faltered, glancing at Lily for a plausible excuse.

"Ohhhhhh, you need some _alone_ time with Lily!" Andromeda giggled knowingly. Several others within earshot also chuckled, as though Snape had somehow gained a reputation as a raging love machine.

Snape inwardly facepalmed, but it was as good an excuse anyway… and it wasn't exactly _false_. He took some minor comfort in the fact that whatever was happening to everyone else hadn't happened to him.

"Yes," he said, "Lily and I need to spend some time in my office."

"Don't do anything I wouldn't do!" Andromeda encouraged them, waving.

Snape put a guiding arm around Lily, swallowing his revulsion for the whole situation as the two of them headed off towards the lower levels.

He made it as far as the last flight of stairs before a skull-splitting spike in his headache made him have to stop, leaning against the wall.

"What's wrong?" Lily asked. Her smile was still in place, but behind her eyes he saw genuine concern.

"Everything," he stated flatly. "I'm not sure what it is, but once we get down to my laboratory I should be able to remedy things… temporarily at least."

He suspected he knew what the sensation was; he'd felt it during his many meetings with Voldemort, though not nearly this intensely. It was like the entire castle was bearing down on his mind, trying to crush his will and mold him into something else. It burned at his mind with the intensity of the Dark Mark that once graced his forearm. He bolstered his mental shields, reinforcing them where they seemed to be weakening.

He lurched into his office, but noticed that it was only vaguely-defined, with generic stone walls, a generic desk with generic writing materials, and generic bookshelves lined with untitled volumes. Blast. He would have to do this from memory, then. He turned to Lily, whose smile had taken on a note of confusion.

"Lily, I need you to sit in the center of the floor, just there."

She did so obediently without so much as a note of protest. Where was the intelligent spitfire he'd known in school? He shook his head to clear it; he couldn't let himself worry about the extreme change in her personality right now.

He couldn't specifically remember whether Andromeda had put his wand with his bundle of clothing, but decided to take a gamble as he reached into his sleeve where he always kept it. His fingertips touched the smooth handle, and he relaxed marginally as he drew it out. Focusing his mind, he called upon his personal stores of magic, channeling energy into the slender device. The tip glowed weakly, and he frowned.

"_Defigo_," he murmured, and his mind cleared and sharpened. The light at the tip of his wand glowed brighter. He would need all the magic he could scrape together if this was going to work.

Starting at the door, Snape started weaving a fabric of protective wards around his vaguely-defined office. He took his time, as rushing this process would leave gaps he couldn't afford and possibly spoil the matrix. Once it became avident what he was doing, he was certain he would not get another chance.

Not avident. Evident. Once it became _evident_ what he was doing. His head felt like someone was hammering railroad spikes into his temples. He couldn't break off the spell to cast another Concentration Charm, or else what he'd built so far would be spoiled. Instead, he delved into his limitless willpower and powered on. A ward such as this usually took five to ten minutes to properly construct; as it was, it took him fifteen, and he felt like his nose should be bleeding afterwards.

Once the barrier was sealed, he rallied the remaining shreds of his concentration and closed his eyes. In his lifetime of learning the ins and outs of the Dark Arts, both how to construct them and tear them down, he had become an expert in the best ward to handle them. He whispered a single word to safeguard his office, at least, against whatever baleful influence had infected Hogwarts: "Tutis."

The oppressive mental weight seemed to evaporate, popping like a soap bubble. It was an immense relief to no longer have such elephantine pressure on his wards. He opened his eyes and glanced around; his office was again as it ought to be, with the proper number of bookshelves filled with such tomes as _Mercavin's Compleat Book of Remedies_ and _Lisander's 1001 Curatives_. His desk was again carved of mahogany, with the seal of Slytherin House emblazoned upon its front, overseen by the stern gaze of Salazar Slytherin from his portrait on the wall. The dank smell of mold and basement greeted him with its familiarity, and all seemed right, at least locally.

Then Lily Potter started screaming in abject horror.

* * *

End Chapter 1.


	2. Chapter 2

Snape supposed, in hindsight, that he could be forgiven for forgetting that Lily's last _proper_ memory was being on the receiving end of the Killing Curse sixteen years ago. After all, she looked virtually unchanged from that time, and Merlin only knew what Andromeda had done to bring her back. When he looked over, he saw that she was white-faced, with the sort of expression that indicated that she's received an extended glimpse into the bowels of Hell - long enough to give the abyss an opportunity to stare back.

He could only think of one way to remedy this, kneeling beside her and gathering her into his arms. She clung to him, shaking with sobs, for several minutes, as he stroked her hair and made vaguely comforting noises. Once he finally settled, he pulled back slightly and tipped her chin up so he could look her in the eye. He face was still pale, and now streaked with tearstains, but at least now she wasn't locked into an expression of jaw-aching happiness.

"Where am I?" she asked, glancing around at his office. "How did I get here?"

"You're in my office in the Dungeon of Hogwarts Castle," he replied. "What's the last thing you remember?"

Her expression grew distant. "Godric's Hollow, with James and little Harry…" She trailed off, and her expression sharpened with renewed fear. "A flash of green light - the Killing Curse - Harry-?"

"Is alive," Snape replied. "He's… seventeen years old now." He hesitated, considering how best to put it, and ultimately deciding on the direct approach. "You and James Potter have been dead for sixteen years."

"I… I never saw James die," she said quietly. "Our only thought was protecting Harry from V… from him."

"You succeeded," Snape said unnecessarily, "Your love protected him, and the curse rebounded back on its caster. Your sister Petunia raised him."

"How do you know all this?" Lily asked, and when she looked up at Snape there was a flicker in her expression. "I… I feel like I should know you."

_So,_ Snape thought, _She didn't really recognize me after all._ He swallowed hard.

"It's me," he said, "Severus Snape. We were friends at school." _Briefly_, he added in his mind.

"You… I don't remember you being so handsome. Did you start studying Transfigurations after we graduated?"

"No. I went into Potions," he summarized briefly, glossing over everything that had happened in between. "Look-things are going awry here. Someone brought you back from the dead."

"But… _can_ the Killing Curse be reversed?"

"Not that I know of, and almost certainly not after so long. Someone is mucking about with the known laws of magic for her own purposes."

"How?" Lily asked, "And why?"

"I don't know how yet, but as for why, she appears to want to make everyone happy."

"That doesn't sound so bad…"

"How did you feel before I got the wards around us?"

Lily frowned. "Trapped," she said, "Like I was a passenger in my own body, forced to watch myself doing and saying things… I kissed you."

Snape had the good grace to look embarassed, pulling away from her and standing up to regard his bookshelves. "I won't say I didn't enjoy that part, but I would _never_ magically compel you to do something like that. Ever. This witch - whoever and _what_ever she is - seems to think this is just fine."

"How were you able to resist?" Lily asked, getting to her feet as well and watching him.

"My studies in Occlumency must have played a role in it," Snape replied, pushing his hair out of his eyes, and addressed his shelves. "Dark Arts. Books on reality warpers and Legilmency experts." One by one, books dropped down from the upper shelves. Snape caught them tidily and made a small stack. "There are many paths of the Dark Arts, just as there are many paths for legal magic," he said to Lily, "We're going to need all the information we can gather if we're to fix this."

"What about recruiting other witches and wizards for help? I mean, there _has_ to be something we can do about this, right?" Lily asked, tilting her head to look at some of the titles Snape had harvested from his library. _Compulsion Spells, Enchantments, and Bindings._ _Make Reality Your Plaything. Beings From Beyond Reality and How to Counter Them. 2001 Arcanovores. 2001 Dangerous Creatures. Worse Than Death: Necromantic Counterspells._

"So far, you and I are the only ones free of her influence," Snape said, "We will have to work carefully if we are to defeat _her_."

Her expression flickered as he uttered the feminine pronoun, and he nodded, assured that Lily knew exactly to whom he referred.

A groan from the wall behind his desk made him turn, flipping his hair back from his face with a toss of his head, and he saw the portrait of Salazar Slytherin that had always hung there. Its occupant was now leaning heavily against the frame, cradling his brow in his hand, and his upper lip was streaked with red from what appeared to have been a nosebleed.

"What happened to you?" Snape asked, and Slytherin looked up, his normally sharp features now drawn and pale.

"I might ask _you_ the same thing," Slytherin replied, wiping the blood from his nose and straightening up. His gaze shifted past Snape, and his lip curled slightly. "And what's _she_ doing here?"

Snape turned, and was unsurprised to find Lily paging through _Beings From Beyond Reality and How to Counter Them._ Of course Slytherin would object to her presence - she was a Muggle-born, after all. Old prejudices die hard, even for portraits.

_Especially_ for portraits.

"She's with me," Snape said shortly, "And to answer your first question, the Brighteyes girl brought me back to life." He watched this sink in.

"I'm sorry," Slytherin said genuinely. He wiped his bloody hand on his robes.

"What happened to you?"

Slytherin grimaced. "She's been here for ten days. I've had… J-Pop in my head that entire time."

Snape frowned. "Under most circumstances I might say that didn't seem to bad."

Slytherin shook his head. "It was a fate I wouldn't wish of my worst enemies." He shuddered. "Ten straight days of Nyan Cat."

"What's Nyan Cat?" Lily asked.

Slytherin told them.

"Merlin's left testicle," Snape breathed in horror, "What's _wrong_ with her?"

Slytherin shook his head. "This is beyond even my knowledge of the Dark Arts. All I can tell you is that she's not human. I've seen others like her in the past, but she's one of the strongest I've seen."

"You know what she is, then?" Snape asked, his hand straying towards _2001 Dangerous Creatures_. He had his suspicions, from the others he'd encountered, but he was willing to accept all the help that he could get.

Slytherin shook his head. "You won't find her kind in there," he said. "In fact, I don't know if there's even a comprehensive writeup of them anywhere. All I know is that there's been a rash of them since 1992. And they've been getting worse of late."

Snape frowned in thought, rubbing his chin. "We need to get some sort of handle on what she is and what she can do," he said. "Only then will we be able to stop her." He looked back at Slytherin's portrait. "Any advice?"

"The two of you won't put a dent in her by yourselves," Slytherin replied bluntly. "If you try, she'll just snag you again. Albus Dumbledore seems to have made it through okay, though."

Lily glanced up hopefully. "Dumbledore? He's still around? Let's go see him!"

Snape put up a hand to silence her. "He's not around any longer," he said, measuring his words carefully. "He… died during the War." He was _not_ about to tell her how Dumbledore died, and especially not that _he_ had killed the beloved headmaster. "I didn't see him in the Great Hall, though, so it appears the Brighteyes girl didn't, or couldn't, bring him back."

"So, if it turns out she _couldn't_," Lily reasoned, "maybe that means that her powers have limits."

"It's quite possible," Snape agreed. "He should be in his portrait in the Headmaster's office."

"I must caution you to be alert," Slytherin said, "Her influence is everywhere here, and if you slip even once, you might never recover. Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to go see if Flamel's portrait can brew up an amnesia-inducing potion."

He turned and left, vanishing off the edge of his frame.

Snape sighed. If one of the founders of Hogwarts didn't know what the hell Andromeda (he refused to even mentally list all the names in between) Brighteyes really was, what chance was there that Dumbledore would know?

"We have to try," he said, mainly to himself, and glanced over at Lily. "The problem is that right now only this one room is free of her influence. Once we're outside the wards…" He didn't need to finish, because she was already nodding. "The first person we'll need to find is Minerva McGonagall so she can let us into the Headmaster's office."

"So we take the ward with us," she concluded, with the surety of a true Gryffindor.

"It doesn't work that way," he replied, crossing to one of his chests full of supplies. He pulled the lid open and started rummaging. "Wards are stationary protective boundaries-they're not portable. My office will make a serviceable sanctuary, but if we're going to recruit help within the school, we're going to need items that we can give to our allies. Items that will protect them from her influence."

"So… amulets or rings?"

"If we had more time, perhaps. Both of those take time to craft-it will have to be something similar, though… something small enough to be easily hidden."

"What about these?" Lily asked. Snape looked up to see what she meant, and found her near his desk, holding a thick bundle of parchment slips. She offered them over, and he studied them. What could he have enough of, to give to the entire…?

"Detention slips?" he asked as his eye fell on the header of the topmost sheet.

"You certainly had a lot of them on your desk," Lily pointed out.

"Yes. Well. I needed them. Never mind." He shook his head. "What's your idea?"

"Put a protective charm on them and hand them out to people we want to recruit."

Snape frowned. "That's quite possibly the…" He paused, mulling it over properly. Of course he would be handing out detention slips. He'd earned the reputation for being the meanest teacher in Hogwarts, and he was proud of it, dammit. Of _course_ he would be handing out detention slips to, oh, say, Harry Potter and his friends. And whatever his opinion was of Potter, the boy _had_ developed a certain talent for fighting the forces of evil, as well as being a trouble magnet. The concession was like nails down the chalkboard of his soul, but there you had it. "That's a brilliant idea," he said finally, "And one that _she_ won't ever see coming."

Lily smirked. "I doubt she'd see a meteor coming, if it messed with her 'happy ending'."

It was good to see her smile, not the blank, mindless smile that Andromeda had forced her into, but a real, genuine smile.

"Let us get started, then," Snape said, "I'll show you how to cast the protective charm on the slips, and we'll be done in half the time." His hair fell into his face again, gleefully thumbing its nose at the laws of physics. He shoved it back irritably. "But first, I need to do something about all this damnable hair."

"Here, let me," Lily said, "Turn around."

He frowned at her. "What are you going to do?"

Lily sighed. "Go on, turn around. Get started on the first few warding slips, and I'll take care of your hair."

Snape shrugged and turned around, using his wand to trace protective sigils on the topmost detention slip. As he did so, he felt Lily's fingers combing through his new mane of silky black hair and gathering it into a ponytail. Then:

"Hirsutius Plaitium," she said. His hair promptly whipped together into a tidy braid. After a pause, she offered this assessment: "Um…"

Snape reached back and touched the braid, but as he felt something stirring at about ankle level, he quickly drew up the entire length to survey how long the braid actually was. This turned out to be about five feet long. He covered his eyes with his hand. He wanted to scream that hair didn't work that way, but instead decided that this was just further evidence of Andromeda's fundamental failure at common sense and at understanding how the world worked. Ranting about it would do nothing but spike his blood pressure, and he honestly wasn't sure what would happen if he died of a heart attack while he was already technically supposed to be dead. The possibilities ranged from nothing at all to the Western Hemisphere being swallowed up in a black hole.

Well. If nothing else he could ward off a wine cellar in the basement and become apocalyptically drunk later. For now, though…

"Right," he said, "Now that that's out of the way, let's get the rest of these slips charmed."

Lily watched by his side as he traced the protective sigils, and then took a portion of the remainder. Side by side, the two set to work crafting Andromeda repellant.

* * *

End of Chapter 2.


	3. Chapter 3

It seemed like days later that the Charmed detention slips were completed, but a glimpse at Snape's grandfather clock confirmed that it had only been a couple of hours. Even so, Snape's eyes burned from peering at his work, and Lily arched her back to work the kinks out of it. He watched her out of the corner of his eye as she then rolled her head back and forth, to the muffled pop of the vertebrae of her neck, and finally sighed.

By Merlin, she was beautiful, in a subtle way that nonetheless blew the flashy glamor of Andromeda Mealymouthed Frogbrained Tiffany Malodorous Brighteyes out of the water. He wanted to apologize to her for everything, ranging from calling her a Mudblood to trying to bargain with Voldemort to spare her so that Snape could have her after James' death. In hindsight, that last was especially disgusting, and left a foul taste in his mouth, and he wasn't even sure if there _was_ a way to explain things that wouldn't make her hate him forever. He meant well, in a bizarre sort of way. He really did. He didn't have time to dwell on that for long, though.

"At least that's done," she said. "That felt like writing lines in detention with our Charms teacher."

"We'll each take some, keeping them hidden," Snape said, dividing up the stack of detention slips. "I'll be the one to give out most of them, but if something happens to me, you need to distribute them as widely as you can."

She nodded. "Hopefully, with all these detention slips on us, she won't be able to get her hooks into us."

"Don't depend on it," he warned her. "The Dark Arts can be subtle. Now lets go find Minerva."

He turned and headed for the door, but Lily caught his arm. He turned back, and saw her smiling brightly, pointing insistently to her mouth.

"Ah, yes," he said, and screwed a toothy smile into place, bolstering it by imagining inflicting the worst academic tortures imaginable on Andromeda. The expression that resulted was cheerful in a way that would have terrified any of his students.

"So," Lily said as they left the sanctuary of his office and re-entered the cheerful Hell that was Hogwarts Castle, "Where do you suppose this party for _her_ will be held?"

"I imagine it will be in the place where all major holidays are celebrated-the Great Hall." He turned in that direction.

"Will my son be there?" There was a note in her voice that tied his stomach into knots.

"I imagine he will be," he said, "Just remember that our priority is getting into the Headmaster's office. _But,_" he added, as she opened her mouth to protest, "If we see him there, we will retrieve him as well." He wasn't stupid enough to get between any woman and her child, no matter how many years had passed since they'd last met.

She closed her mouth, mollified.

The Great Hall had been completely redecorated since they'd left it, festooned in the Ravenclaw colors, with large images of Andromeda's face displayed prominently between banners proclaiming that "We Love You, Andromeda!"

The tables in the Great Hall were covered in a lavish feast, and half the partygoers were happily shovelling food around their grins, while the other half were gathered around a central focus-most likely the girl of the hour.

Egad, she was _such_ an attention whore.

Snape and Lily grinned their way through the crowd, with Lily hanging onto Snape's arm like the two of them were Together. Of course they were. Why wouldn't they be? Andromeda had decreed it. She didn't even have the plausible excuse that she'd meant well-she just wanted her goddamn happy ending, by any means possible, and she was willing to rewrite the universe to get it. He was certain all the grinning faces were meant to be cheerful, but he knew in the pit of his stomach that behind those masks were a lot of scared people, crammed back into a dark corner of their own minds.

She was like Voldemort, without the restraint.

Abruptly, the crowd parted like the Red Sea before Moses (a fine wizard in his own right, but rather blown out of proportion by the witnesses) to reveal Andromeda, who was wearing platform boots, red fishnet tights, a black miniskirt, and a DragonForce tee-shirt under her school robes and house tie, for whatever ungodly reason. Even so, next to her radiant beauty, everyone else in the room seemed to pale to mediocrity. The colors of the decorations paled and muted, and Snape was hit with the near-crippling sensation that he would never be anywhere near as skilled a sorcerer as Andromeda was now, that she'd mastered more in her sixteen years than he had in his thirty-eight, and that he should just give up and worship her and get it over with. She wasn't even looking in their direction, instead chattering with some of the nearby faculty members.

He gritted his teeth behind his smile and tore his gaze away from her all-encompassing beauty. Near Andromeda he saw Minerva McGonagall, who was talking with Tom Riddle, while her body language suggested she was flirting with him, leaning in to take in his every word, touching him on the arm repeatedly, and so forth. Meanwhile, Riddle was gesturing to Andromeda in a way that, regardless of the actual topic of conversation, boded ill for the future of Hogwarts.

Snape swallowed his bile at the whole situation and made a beeline for Minerva, while his mind spun to come up with an plausible reason to get her out of there immediately. Lily's arm tightened on the crook of his elbow, pulling him up short, and he turned to see her looking over at the Gryffindor table. Her smile melted from the fake smile to one of genuine affection, and he knew even before he followed her gaze that she'd found Harry. He leaned over to murmur in her ear.

"We can get him on the way out, Lily," he said quietly. "Right now we need to get Minerva."

"Severus!" he heard from his original direction. He turned and saw Minerva approaching him, and he quickly cranked his smile back into full gear. For her part, she still looked as happy as ever - that is to say, the bottom half of her face was just delighted, while the top half was scared out of its mind. "I trust you and Lily have had time to become reacquainted?"

"In a manner of speaking," he replied, deftly sidestepping the many levels of entendre that were somehow crammed into two sentences. He tightened his own grip on Lily's arm, and he felt her turn back to the matter at hand.

"It's the most amazing thing," Minerva said, as though the previous topic had simple ceased to exist, "Miss Brighteyes was just telling me about her tragic past…"

"Minerva," Snape said.

"…being raised by a cruel Muggle family who beat her daily…"

"Minerva," Snape said.

"… all because her magical powers started to manifest when she was just a toddler…"

"_Minerva-I-need-to-have-a-word-with-you-right-now_," Snape broke in quickly.

Minerva blinked, but he honestly couldn't tell whether she was put out or relieved at the interruption. "Yes, Severus, what is it?"

"Peeves is making a mess in the Entrance Hall," simply fell out of his mouth, followed by, "I need your help in stopping him."

"Oh," McGonagall said, sounding politely confused, "I thought Andromeda got rid of him."

"Well, he's back, and he seems quite angry about the ouster. Come quickly, before he breaks the chandelier." Snape honestly couldn't say for sure that there _was_ a chandelier in the Entrance Hall, either before Andromeda's meddling or afterwards, but what was done was done. She would believe him or she wouldn't.

"All right," she said, "Lead the way. Excuse me, Thomas."

Riddle swept a low bow to her. Snape had been under the impression (from what the girl herself had said) that Riddle was head-over-heels in love with Andromeda, so either Andromeda was fine with some form of love triangle or she had the attention span of a gnat. Either way, Snape didn't recall hearing even rumors that Riddle had been a ladies' man. Charismatic, yes, but only in the same way that Darth Vader was charismatic-you paid attention to him because people who didn't tended to _die_.

Needless to say, Riddle was _not_ on his list of people to free from Andromeda's influence.

Lily spoke up. "We need to bring Harry with us," she said, in tones that suggested she wasn't leaving otherwise.

Snape nodded. "Quickly." Lily headed off, angling for the Gryffindor table.

"I was just considering making Miss Brighteyes the next Headmaster of Hogwarts," Minerva said. "After all, she's been through so much. Did you know that her nine older siblings were devoured by dragons?" She shook her head. "And she had to see that, at the tender age of two."

"Hurry up, Lily," Snape muttered under his breath, maneuvering Minerva towards the doors. He didn't dare look to check her progress. _Just act casual, Severus…_

"And when she was four she started training in dragon hunting to avenge them."

_Hurry-up-hurry-up-hurry-up…_

"Then when she was ten she lost an arm to a Norwegian Ridgeback and discovered that she had the most astonishing healing abilities."

Snape's stomach turned. Not even full-blooded veela could heal that fast without some serious magic.

"Where ya going?" Andromeda's voice behind them made Snape's blood freeze. He whirled, still smiling desperately, trying to subtly interpose himself between Andromeda and Minerva.

Andromeda's eyes were orbs of polished emerald, shining as though from an inner glow of powerful innate magic. Somehow her tee-shirt now bore the phrase My Chemical Romance (whatever that meant), and instead of a miniskirt and fishnets she wore a pair of torn blue jeans. At this distance he saw that her nails and lips were painted an impossible blend of pink and violet that made his eyes water.

"Peeves," he said simply, "In the Entrance Hall. Causing trouble." Her gaze bore down on him like the Imperius Curse.

"I would have _sworn_ I got rid of him!" Andromeda sniffed, tossing her head in a way that made her gleaming fiery-red tresses cascade across her back in slow-motion. "I'll get rid of him for you. I guess I have to do _everything_ important around here. I _hate_ being the best there is at everything!" She was smiling brightly as she complained through. "Being wonderful is _such_ a curse!"

"That's quite all right," Snape said, thinking fast, "No need to trouble yourself with this - the Grey Lady saw a unicorn up in the Seventh Floor Corridor, and it looked terribly lost."

Andromeda brightened without actually changing her expression. "A unicorn?" she chirped merrily, in a voice lilke the songs of birds. "Such beautiful and shy and pure creatures unicorns are! Not to worry - I'll rescue it and lead it back to safety! I'm the best there is at handling magical creatures, after all." She sighed in exasperation at her own wonderfulness and trotted away. Only when she was out of sight did Snape release the breath he'd been holding. If he was _lucky_, she would be running around the Seventh Floor Corridor for hours looking for a unicorn that didn't exist. Otherwise, he'd at least bought them a few minutes to make their escape.

"What's this about a unicorn?" Minerva asked. Snape caught movement out of the corner of his eye, and glanced over to find Lily waving. She had Harry (still stupidly grinning) by the wrist, and as she caught his eye she gestured towards the door. He nodded.

"I'll explain later," he told Minerva. "Let's go. Quickly." He put an arm around her waist and herded her towards the Entrance Hall.

"The Riddle boy has been _such_ a delight now that he's all better," Minerva continued on as they passed through the door. "I wish I was half as talented as Andromeda…"

The heavy double doors banged shut, muffling much of the noise from Andromeda's self-congratulatory party. Snape sighed in relief and flexed his facial muscles to release the grin. He turned, making sure that Lily and Harry were also safely away. Lily nodded at him, grasping her son by the shoulders, and then turned back to Harry. Snape's stomach twisted as she smoothed back Harry's fringe, getting her first good look at him since he was an infant.

Well. He couldn't dwell on the past right now.

"There's no telling how long we have," he said to Lily, "I'll get Minerva protected, and then I'll take care of Harry. I imagine…. you have a lot to discuss."

Lily glanced at Snape and nodded. He turned back to face Minerva, whose eyes were darting around anxiously above her smile. He pulled one of the detention slips from his sleeve.

"Minerva," he said, and her attention focused back on him. "Keep your eyes on me. Concentrate. And whatever happens _do not scream_." He pressed the detention slip into her hand.

Her vision cleared almost instantly, and she gulped in a huge lungful of air. Snape quickly clamped his hand over her mouth, but unstead of screaming she seemed to be merely taking several deep breaths, nearly to the point of hyperventilation.

"Minerva?" he asked. "Minerva, I need you to calm yourself. Something terrible is happening at Hogwarts and I need your help. Now I need your help to get to the bottom of this." She nodded behind his hand, tears of horror brimming in her eyes. "Now I can explain as much as I know, but I need your assurance that when I take my hand off your mouth you_ will not scream_. Can you do that?" She nodded again. "Good." He pulled his hand free of her mouth, and she let out a quiet whimpering noise.

"S… Severus?" she asked quietly.

"That's right. I know I look different, but I'm still Severus Snape."

Minerva frowned. "But…. I thought you died. I remember attending your funeral."

"I know," Snape replied, wincing. "She brought me and a lot of other people back from the dead. You remember Lily, right?" He gestured to the witch in question, who inclined her head.

Minerva didn't seem much assured by this. If anything, her expression became more troubled, as though she knew in the core of her soul that this shouldn't happen. She turned back to Snape, her face flooded with questions. Right now, though, he was certain that he couldn't answer most of them.

"We need to get into your office so we can talk with Dumbledore's portrait," he said. "I can fill you in on as much of the situation as I know of on the way. But for right now…"

He turned to Harry. While the circumstances were not ideal, and honestly the gesture was a false pretense, he was going to make the most of it.

"Lily," he said quietly, "do forgive me, but I've wanted to do this for seven years now."

"Do what?" Lily asked, frowning.

Snape drew himself up to his full height. "Harry Potter," he intoned in his best Evil Potioneer voice, and Harry turned to him with a cautious note in his cheerful smile. "You are displaying a level of obnoxious chipperness unbefitting a seventeen-year-old wizard who's been through the rise of a Dark Lord, the death and torture of several allies, and a Wizard War. You are a thorn in my side, your father was a self-important jerk, and your socks don't match. The penalty - _detention!_" He pushed a detention slip into Harry's hand.

Yes it was childish, but _damn_, that felt good.

Harry blinked several times. His smile faded as the color drained from his face. Snape dodged back as the boy doubled over, dry-heaving. Lily was instantly at Harry's side, her arms around him. She glared at Snape.

"Don't you think that was a _bit_ much?" she demanded.

"You act like I knew he was going to get sick to his stomach," Snape returned. "So far he's the second one to receive a detention slip. I just…" He caught the look on Lily's face. "Okay, fine. Potter, how are you feeling?"

Harry gagged once more and wiped his mouth on the sleeve of his robe. "Like I just came from one of my Remedial Potions classes," he said weakly. Lily touched Harry's face, and he looked up, peering into his mother's eyes for the first time in nearly his entire life. The transformation on his face was magical, going from nauseated misery to once-in-a-lifetime, miraculous disbelief in a matter of seconds. "…Mum?" he whispered.

"Hello, Harry," Lily said, her eyes sparkling with tears of joy.

"Mum!" Harry flung himself into her arms, and the two hugged each other fiercely, enjoying the bond between mother and son, the sort of blood bond that not even death could possibly break.

Snape watched the reunion in awkward silence. While he was more-or-less satisfied to have reunited mother and son, it could have been done under better circumstances.

Finally he cleared his throat. "As willing as I am to let the two of you catch up," he said delicately, "We have other things to do."

Only now did Harry seem to truly notice Snape. "Wait a second," he said, "I thought you - I _saw_ you die! What's going on?"

Snape pinched the bridge of his nose, just _knowing_ that he was going to deal with variations of "I thought you died" for the rest of the day, at least. "_Yes_, I died," he said. "_Yes_, I'm back. Yes, I know how it happened._ Yes_, I'll be explaining it to you. _No_, we don't have time right now. We need to move before Andromeda gets back. Any questions?"

"What needs to be done?" Harry asked. A very practical question, Snape thought.

"We need to find out how much Dumbledore knows about her," Snape said. He turned to Minerva. "His portrait is still in the Headmaster's Office, correct?"

She nodded. "It should be," she said, "but you know how mysterious he likes to be."

"It's our only chance," Snape said. "Lead the way. I'll fill you and Potter in on what we know so far."

By a coincidence that would have been more astonishing under other circumstances, the explanation of the situation as Snape knew it, plus the respective questions of the newest members of their little group, took exactly the length of time required to travel from the Entrance Hall, up several flights of stairs in the Grand Staircase to the third floor, and from there to the gargoyle that marked the entrance. Accordingly, Minerva and Harry had gone from disoriented and confused to merely worried - a more useful mental state, all things considered, as it would allow them to start coming up with solutions to the Andromeda problem.

"So she's better than everyone at the school," Harry summarized.

"It would seem so," Snape replied. "Whether by actual talent or otherwise, I have yet to determine, though."

"And she brought a lot of people back who ought to be dead," Minerva said.

"Yes," Snape said, "though I'm not sure if their state could be considered _living_, or simply extremely cheerful Inferi. Right now we four seem to be the only ones not under her control."

"So how can we stop her?" Harry asked.

"That's what I intend to find out. Any other questions?" Snape said, as they drew level with the statue in question.

"Just one," Harry said. "Do you know your braid is dragging on the ground?"

Snape looked back and found that his hair had grown at least another foot since Lily had braided it. He frowned and reached back to touch the nape of his neck where the braid started; it was still reasonably snug. He sighed and snatched up the hair rope, looping it over his shoulder.

"She seems to like me with long hair," Snape summarized. "Merlin alone knows why."

"That's odd," Minerva remarked, but when Snape looked she was staring at the gargoyle. "The gargoyle seems more… real than anything else in the hallway."

Snape looked. He could make out every detail of the gargoyle statue, from the rough texture of the stone from which it was carved to the detailed texture of its half-folded wings, the grooves in its horns, and the way its talons seemed to dig into the pedestal on which it perched. Around its alcove, the stone walls of the corridor seemed insubstantial and generic, like somebody had papered the walls with masonry-patterned wallpaper, right up to the alcove's archway, which seemed by comparison to be so real it almost glowed.

"Oi," said the gargoyle. "Are ye gonna stand there gawping at me, or d'ye have the password?"

"Cockroach clusters," Minerva said. The gargoyle inclined his head to her and shuffled aside.

The four of them headed inside.

Snape noticed the release of mental pressure almost instantly once he crossed the threshold, similar to the sensation of his own wards sealing in his office. He glanced around as the others followed him in, and saw that Andromeda's influence not touched the office at all. The floor was made of polished oak, the desk of artfully aged cherry-wood, and the tomes, trinkets, and doodads that Dumbledore and the other headmasters before him had collected over the centuries were in place on nearly every horizontal surface. The place had a familiar, _safe_ smell of old parchment, candle wax, and lamp oil that conjured memories of Snape's own tenure as a student, and then as a teacher at Hogwarts. Everything was bathed in a golden glow that, after brief investigation, proved to radiate from Fawkes, Dumbledore's pet phoenix.

The bird in question gave an unhappy chirp.

"Of course!" Harry said. "Phoenixes are extremely good creatures, with the power to repel evil - it makes sense that Fawkes would be able to keep her away!"

Minerva reached up and stroked Fawkes' breast. "Good boy," she said fondly. "I would have thought you'd left after Dumbledore's death."

"He did," said a familiar voice from the wall above the Headmaster's desk. Everyone glanced up to find Dumbledore's portrait hanging there. "It seems that he felt the need to return a bit over a week ago."

"Albus," Snape said, relieved at the relative presence of the former headmaster. "Are you aware of what's happening at Hogwarts?"

"Indeed I am," Dumbledore replied cheerfully. "As a matter of fact, she tried to bring me bac k to life."

"What happened?" Harry asked.

"I declined." Dumbledore made the act of refusing Andromeda sound as fundamental as crossing the street. "Being in this state has given me a marvelous perspective on things, far beyond what even most wizards of my level can really understand."

"Salazar Slytherin said you might know what she was," Snape said. "Do you?"

"Indeed I do," Dumbledore said. "Why don't you sit down and relax for a bit? You have much to learn. Minerva, there's some tea in the jar to your right, and a kettle over the fire. I'd brew some up myself, but you understand that there are things that portraits can't do for the living." Minerva nodded and started making tea. "As for the rest of you," Dumbledore continued, "The chairs are, I imagine, every bit as comfortable as they ever were. Once the tea is done, I shall answer as many of your questions as I am able."

As she started brewing tea, the others settled onto the various chairs, ranging from spartan wooden chairs designed to be no more than a place to rest in between tasks, to deep-cushioned easy chairs so soft that one might be inclined to fear taking a nap in one lest it eat you.

"It's so good to see all of you," Dumbledore continued, in tones reserved for small-talk. "Lily, you're looking especially well, considering your state of health for the past sixteen years."

Lily offered a pained smile.

"Harry," Dumbledore continued blithely, "I haven't seen you properly in over a year. How are you?"

"Terribly confused by this whole thing, sir," Harry replied.

"Quite understandable," Dumbledore smiled. "After all, things should rightfully have gone in a very different direction. And Severus… my goodness, she did a number on you, didn't she?"

Snape scowled. "I don't understand why she's doing all this - or why my hair has been getting so bloody long. It's unmanageable."

"Well, I imagine it is every young witch's dream to have a handsome Potions teacher with a tragic backstory, silky hair, and a nice-looking backside."

Lily clapped a hand over her mouth, Harry had a coughing fit, and Minerva nearly dropped the kettle.

"I'd rather _not_ have people commenting on my backside!" Snape snarled, reddening.

Dumbledore put up a placating hand. "Have no fear, Severus," he said. "You are still as talented a Potioneer as you've always been, no matter how capable you are at holding people's attention, or by what means. Now," he said, swiftly changing topics, "You want to know what it is you are currently facing."

"Yes, please," came a ragged chorus of slightly relieved voices.

Dumbledore smiled, and then looked very grave. "What I am about to tell could be very disturbing. The being that you are currently facing is extremely powerful and otherworldly, and if you are not careful in handling her, she could destroy everything that you know to be true, everything that you hold dear. She is worse than anything any of you have encountered thus far."

"Worse than Voldemort?" Harry asked.

"Far worse," Dumbledore agreed. "For while Voldemort was capable of many great and terrible things, he was still bound by the laws that governed magic. Miss Brighteyes is a creature that does not respect such laws - does not even acknowledge that they should apply to her - and as such she is potentially the most dangerous being our world has ever known."

As he spoke, darkness crept into the corners of the office, snuffing the candles, and even cornering the healing glow of Fawkes' plumage. Lilly hugged herself as a chill crept into the air.

"Does this being have a name, then?" Snape said, the hope in his voice tempered by caution.

"Yes," Dumbledore said. "Although the species is legion, they all fundamentally answer to a single name."

There was a distant rumble of thunder, and half the candles in the office went out.

"Its name," said Dumbledore, "Is Mary Sue."

* * *

End Chapter 3.


	4. Chapter 4

There was a long, thoughtful pause.

"Did anyone else hear that?" Lily asked finally.

"Hear what?" asked Minerva.

"I don't know," Lily said. "It sounded a bit like someone sitting on the keys of a pipe organ, just after Dumbledore said the name."

"I didn't hear anything," Snape said. "Besides, it didn't _sound_ like the name of something terrible. It didn't even sound particularly powerful."

Dumbledore offered a pained smile. "That, of course, is the most dangerous part. Mary Sue-"

"There's that noise again!" Lily blurted.

"-is a powerful and dangerous foe," Dumbledore continued, without missing a beat. "She is able to rewrite entire personalities to suit her whims, should she so choose, or create entire worlds to play in."

"How do you know about all this?" Harry asked.

"Being in my current state has afforded me the most wonderful perspective on things," Dumbledore said. "Of course, learning that you are vulnerable to the whims of an unrestrained individual can be a bit disheartening."

"Wait a minute," Snape said, holding up his hand. "What _exactly_ is Mary Sue?"

Lily stiffened slightly, but said nothing.

"She's an Author who likes to dabble in other worlds," Dumbledore said, clearly pronouncing the capital A. "You have no idea of the things I've seen in the years since young Harry started attending Hogwarts, and not just the things you might remember."

Snape glanced at Harry. Weird things _did _seem to gravitate towards him and his friends like iron filings to a magnet…

"Why, I remember in 1992," Dumbledore continued, "we could barely play Quidditch because Gryffindor had twenty million Seekers on its team, _all_ of them the best."

"I think I would have remembered something like that," Minerva said, frowning. "Besides, they couldn't _all_ be the best. It just doesn't make sense."

Dumbledore smiled. "Indeed. Everybody wants to be the best, but Mary Sue can actually enforce it-or revise events to her liking. Harry seems to be a common point of focus for such beings, as are you, Severus."

Snape grimaced, taking up another loop of silky braid. "I've noticed."

"In fact, you wouldn't believe some of the stories I've read about the myriad romances that supposedly developed between the students and teachers at Hogwarts."

"You've read them?" Harry asked. "As in, people have written them down?"

"Well, yes and no," Dumbledore said. "You wouldn't be able to get to them, nor would you want to. They deviate from actual events so radically, they'd give one a nosebleed."

"That sounds like the sorts of tales that Skeeter woman would write in her gossip column," Snape said.

"Oh, far worse than that, I assure you," Dumbledore said. "I've read stories romantically pairing Harry with Hermione Granger-"

"Skeeter," Snape said.

"Hermione with Draco Malfoy-"

"Skeeter," Snape said.

"James Potter with Sirius Black-"

Lily choked on her tea.

"Skeeter," Snape said.

"Remus Lupin with Lily Potter-"

Harry choked on his tea.

"Skeeter," Snape said.

"Severus Snape with Hermione Granger-"

"Skeeter," Snape said.

"Severus Snape with Draco Malfoy-"

"Skeeter," Snape said.

"Severus Snape with the giant squid-"

_Now_ Snape choked on his tea.

"This is all very… educational," Minerva said delicately as Snape tried to get Earl Grey out of his sinuses, "But what can we _do_ about her? If she's able to ignore the rules of magic, how can we even stop her?"

"She might be able to ignore the rules, but she isn't completely immune to them," Dumbledore said. "She is powerful and charismatic, but taking the form of a sixth-year witch has inevitably limited her. You will need to find her limits, and use them against her." He pulled out a pocketwatch and glanced at it. "Now, if you'll excuse me, I have tea scheduled with a dear friend of mine in just a few minutes." He put away the watch and stepped out of his frame.

"Enigmatic, as always," Harry concluded with a sigh.

Snape blew his nose into a green handkerchief, emitting a loud honk. "If we sit here musing on how trapped we are," he said, "We won't make any progress in stopping her. So, let us brainstorm on what we will need."

"Numbers," Lily said. "As long as she has her army of devotees we won't be able to make much progress."

"We don't necessarily need numbers," Harry replied. "It would _help_ but it might also tip our hand early. I mean, I've done a lot with just me, Hermione, and Ron."

"Don't remind me," Snape groaned, rubbing his forehead.

"So probably we just need the right people in the right places," Harry continued.

"Quite so," Minerva said. "Miss Granger, for example, can help us in researching the laws of magic so we might find ways to use them against _her_."

"And we have to free Ron, too," Harry put in. "He could help with strategy, and… I just can't leave him like that. He's my best friend."

"He'll want to free all of his siblings as well," Snape noted. "I believe all of them were accounted for in the Great Hall."

Harry grinned. "Just imagine the damage the twins could do." Just as suddenly, though, his smile faded. "But Fred… sort of died."

Snape's eyes flicked briefly over to Lily, who met his gaze. "We'll need to be careful freeing him, then. The mental trauma alone… I can't even imagine."

"He should be fine as long as George is nearby. And… I definitely don't want to leave Ginny like that."

"House loyalty aside," Snape put in, "I think some representatives from Slytherin House should be considered as well. Malfoy is at the top of his class-"

"He's a conceited weasel!" Harry blurted.

"He's a _cunning_ young man who got in over his head," Snape hissed. "You should know that as well as any, unless you were blind."

"He'd sooner eat his own arm than help us," Harry argued. "Even after I saved his life."

"_I_ will be able to convince him, I assure you," Snape shot back. "He's more talented than you were willing to see, Potter."

"Gentlemen!" Minerva barked. "We are wasting valuable time. Less arguing, more planning!"

Snape pinched the bridge of his nose. Malfoy _would_ be hard to convince, and he had to concede that many of the Slytherins, once freed, would consider siding with the Brighteyes girl simply because she appeared to be on the winning side. Yes, they were cunning and shrewd, but they were also self-serving blood purists.

And they were bad at improvisation.

"I'm not all that familiar with the students here," Lily put in, "But maybe we could recruit the Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher?"

There was a beat of silence.

"What? They're still teaching DADA, right?" Lily pressed.

"The last Defense teacher was Amycus Carrow," Minerva said thinly, "whom I trust about as far as I can throw him."

Lily slumped a bit. "Okay," she said. "Who held the position before him?"

"Me," Snape said. "And before that it was Dolores Umbridge-"

Harry muttered a rude word under his breath.

"Alastor Moody-"

"Still deceased," Minerva said.

"Remus Lupin-"

"I remember seeing him in the Great Hall," Lily said.

"Gilderoy Lockhart-"

"Still in St. Mungo's, last I heard," Minerva said.

"And Quirinius Quirrell."

"Had Voldemort growing out of the back of his head," Harry summarized. "This leaves us with _one_ out of all of them that I would even sort of trust with something like this."

Snape grimaced. "And he's a werewolf," he groaned, following Harry's train of thought. He shook his head; this was no time to pick and choose due to past grievances; werewolf or no, Marauder or no, Lupin was a decent wizard in his own right and knew how to handle himself.

"And we'll need someone who knows how to think outside the box," Lily said. "Someone who can get around what the Brighteyes girl 'knows' about magic, so that we might be able to catch her by surprise."

There was a long silence. The Weasley twins might help in that regard, but not if Fred had a mental breakdown from being resurrected and George was busy taking care of him. And-regardless of whatever _other_ rules they regularly broke, Fred and George were known troublemakers, so it was likely that Brighteyes would be on the lookout for them. And of course Harry would be a known entity as well, considering how all of Voldemort's plans had centered around him to start with. But who could they…?

"Luna Lovegood," Harry said suddenly.

Snape stared at him. He bit back the instinctive biting remark that his nomination inspired-on the theme of _but she's not right in the head_. "Explain," he said instead.

"First off," Harry said, "She's in Ravenclaw, so she might be able to give us a better idea of what Brighteyes is up to. Secondly, she can perceive things that not everyone can-and a lot of them are real. Thirdly, she doesn't think like most witches think, meaning Brighteyes probably won't be able to plan around her. Fourth, she's a formidable spellcaster-she's an excellent duellist, and I've seen her use a nonverbal stunning spell. Finally, if she can get more Ravenclaws behind us we might have more of a chance."

Snape considered this, and then nodded. The choice was unorthodox, to be sure, but Harry's logic was relatively sound-and really, in a case like this, maybe the quirky options would work out better than Snape would otherwise anticipate. And Harry had fought alongside the girl, so…

A curious cadence of rhythmic staccato rattling clattered past somewhere above their heads. _Tlot-tlot-tlot-tlot-tlot…_

"Right," he said. "So we have a selection of people to round up for help, so we might as well get to it. I don't know how long Brighteyes will be kept busy on the wild goose chase I sent her on, so we'll need to hurry."

"How _did_ you get rid of her?" Harry asked.

"I sent her looking for a unicorn in the Seventh Floor Corridor. She should be gone for hours."

Harry went pale.

Snape looked at him. "…What?" he asked.

Harry put a hand over his eyes. "Snape… do you know about the Room of Requirement?"

Snape frowned.

"It's a secret room that appears when somebody really needs something?" Harry prompted.

Snape shook his head, not making the connection.

"On the Seventh Floor Corridor?" Harry prodded.

Then it hit him. "And since she's a reality warper…" Snape began.

"…She might just find a unicorn up there, thanks to the room," Harry finished.

"But unicorns are creatures of purity and good," Snape returned. "It would instinctively avoid her."

"Think about it," Harry said. "In the Muggle world, teenaged girls love unicorns. Like, squealing and giggling love them."

In the resultant silence that followed, Snape had the good grace to feel really, _really_ stupid. If what Potter said was true-which Snape wasn't immediately willing to concede, but weird things had been happening all day-then he'd just handed the Brighteyes girl a new toy to play with. He could only hope that unicorns couldn't navigate stairs-which honestly wasn't one of those things that one tended to think about under normal circumstances.

"We should hurry," Lily said, a fresh note of urgency in her voice.

"Agreed," Minerva said, likewise.

Snape stood up. "Back to the Great Hall, then," he said, adding solemnly, "And remember-_keep smiling_." He screwed his own grin into place.

Harry shivered. "Professor," he said, "That looks _really_ scary on you."

"_Good._"

* * *

End of Chapter 4.


	5. Chapter 5

The Great Hall was empty. Not only was it empty, but it was empty in such a way as to suggest it had been hastily evacuated: the Ravenclaw banners were still dangling tastefully around the room, but many of the blue and bronze streamers were half torn down, and several of the "We Love Andromeda" banners were on the floor and trampled. Benches were overturned. Not a soul remained, save for a few house elves who were busily gathering up the post-party detritus, including...

"Dobby?!" Harry exclaimed. "What are you doing here? I thought you d..." he trailed off. Dobby, for some unfathomable reason, was back to wearing a pillowcase.

"Dobby did not wish to return, sir," Dobby said, looking haunted. "But _she_ insisted. Dobby remembers dying in battle." He looked reproachful, which indicated to Snape that he was not entirely subject to Andromeda's powers.. "Dobby died a _free elf_."

Harry went white then, and quietly excused himself. Snape glanced after him as he moved several feet away and stood facing away from the group, his head down. He glanced at Lily, who met his eyes and went over to comfort her son.

"Dobby," Snape said quietly dropping pretense along with his idiot grin, "Did you see where the students went? We're trying to-"

"Severus Snape also died," Dobby pointed out. "Severus Snape should not be here, and neither should..." He trailed off, glancing over at Lily and Harry, but Snape believed he was mainly glancing at Lily.

Snape pinched the bridge of his nose. "Yes. Which is why we're trying to recruit help. Where did the others go?"

Dobby frowned in deep thought. "The students went back to their dormitories not long after _she_ left. Dobby does not know where the others went, but Dobby can find out."

"All right. Good. Thank you, Dobby."

Dobby made a face. Snape had never heard of a house elf being capable of hatred or loathing, but he judged that the ugly rictus that now contorted Dobby's elfin features was close to one of these. "_She_ does not belong here. As long as _she_ is here, things will be broken.. Once _she _is gone, things will be fixed again." He clutched at his head then, letting out a groan of pain. "Severus Snape must hurry, or things wuill be too broken to fix."

Snape frowned; he heard something odd in Dobby's voice during that last remark, but he couldn't quite put his finger on it. He'd heard something similar in the "good mroning" with which the Brighteyes girl had first greeted him, but hearing it in Dobby's voice chilled him; it was like hearing the universe groaning under a great strain.

As Dobby staggered off and out of sight, Snape turned to Minerva. She looked as disquieted as he felt. He sighed.

"So much for finding everyone in the same place," he said.

By now Harry and Lily had rejoined them. Harry had some of his colour back, but still looked a bit poleaxed.

"New plan," Snape said. "We'll need to spread out to find who we're looking for. The students should be in their respective House dormitories. Harry, Lily, you check Gryffindor. Minerva, you check Ravenclaw. I'll check Slytherin. If you run across Lupin, or if you find anyone you think might be useful, try to recruit them, but _be careful_."

"And keep smiling," Harry put in.

"Right. And if you see Brighteyes, _run_. She's likely to be in the company of a unicorn, so with any luck you'll hear her coming."

The others nodded, screwed their smiles into place, and scattered.

* * *

Snape wasn't really sure what he'd been expecting when he found Lupin.

Among the things that he _wasn't_ expecting were that he and his wife Tonks were in a corner making out like horny teenagers-yes, even at this apparent late stage of her pregnancy, even though he would have sworn she'd given birth a while back. Her hair was red-not red like one would expect hair to be red, but red like a Muggle fire engine. Lupin was making playful growling noises as he nuzzled her neck, and presently she reached up and scratched his ribs in a way that made his leg on that side kick uncontrollably.

Snape facepalmed. Lupin had always been fairly conservative in his displays of affection. Oh sure, the two of them had certainly done _that_ if they had a child together, but he hadn't latched onto Tonk in public aside from a brush of the hand on a kiss on the cheek. He'd always been afraid of losing control and hurting her.

He was probably the first man in history to use a wolfsbane potion as a prophylactic.

And now he was acting like a bloody dog.

Well, he was here, and he _was_ one of their prospective allies, so Snape had to get him away from her by some means that wouldn't tip his hand.

He watched the two of them slobbering all over each other for a few minutes, fighting the urge to vomit into a potted plant, and then he came to a sudden realization.

A dog. Remus Lupin was acting like a dog.

Snape had a horrible, absurd, stupid idea.

He held out his hand. "_Accio_ Lupin's wand!" he commanded.

Lupin's coat pocket twitched, and a slender length of wood flew into Snape's hand. Lupin's head snapped up as he noticed the theft, and he let out a low, bestial growl.

"Look at the stick!" Snape said, as enthusiastically as he could, as he held up the filched wand. Lupin's eyes fixed on it. "Want the stick? Look at it! You want the stick? Huh?" He waved the wand to and fro, and Lupin's focus only sharpened, with the enthusiasm of a bookworm in the biggest library in the world..

"Throw it," Lupin said quietly.

Merlin's beard, it was _working_.

"Want me to throw the stick?" Snape continued, backing up. Lupin advanced, his steps light and his head bobbing and weaving to follow the path of his wand.

"Throw it," Lupin said, a bit louder. "Throw the stick. Want to fetch. Throw it. Throw the stick."

"Fetch, boy!" Snape threw the wand down the hallway.

Lupin gave out an excited bark and sprinted after it. Snape loped after him, trying to keep him in sight.

The wand bounced and clattered across the stone floor. Lupin, in his haste, overshot it, skidded as he tried to reverse course, and wound up scrabbling on all fours before he regained control and galloped back to the wand. He picked it up with one hand, stuck it in his mouth like a horse bit, and jogged back to Snape, his eyes wide and bright in a delighted _Look what I did_ expression. If he'd had a tail, Snape was sure it would be wagging.

Snape couldn't believe how _well_ that had worked. Now, on to business...

"Running in the halls," he intoned, shoving a detention slip into Lupin's breast pocket. "_Detention_."

Lupin blinked hard several times, glanced down at the wand stuck in his mouth, and then back up at Snape.

In the next instant, the wand was in his hand, the business end shoved under Snape's chin.

"Explain yourself," Lupin said levelly. His eyes were still wide, but now they looked scared and distrustful. Perfectly understandable, Snape considered.

He pushed Lupin's wand away. "Hogwarts has been taken over by an outsider," he said. "She's changed everything, including people's personalities, to suit her whims. I've managed to get some people freed, but we-I-need your help."

"Who the hell are you?" Lupin demanded.

Snape sighed. Here we go. "Severus Snape."

A low growl rumbled from Lupin's throat. "Prove it."

"_What?_" If he was going to have to go through all of this every single bloody...

"You don't look like Snape, and you don't smell like him, either." Lupin wrinkled his nose. "You smell more like body cologne than a potions master."

"I do not."

"You do too."

"I do not."

"You do too."

Snape really, _really_ didn't have time for this. "SIT, BOY!" he commanded.

There was a muffled _thump_ as Lupin sat.

"I need you to shut up and listen," Snape said.

Lupin started to get up. "What the hell are you-"

"SIT!"

_Thump_.

"STOP THAT!" Lupin shouted.

"Are you ready to listen, or are you going to keep barking?"

Lupin tried again to stand. "Stop treating me like a dog!"

"SIT!"

_Thump._

Neither of them said anything for a long time. Snape stood before the seated werewolf, his arms folded, giving him one of his patented Evil Potion Master glares. Lupin met it for maybe fifteen seconds before looking away.

"Are you done?" Lupin asked.

"Are you?" Snape returned. "I don't have time to argue the finer points with you, but suffice it to say that everything I've said so far is true."

Lupin was silent for a time. "Nice hair," he said finally.

Snape winced. "Her work." He glanced down and noticed the coil had developed a lot of slack, and took up another loop of braid. "I swear, the girl has some sort of hair fetish."

"Who all have you gathered besides me?" Lupin asked.

"Harry Potter, Minerva McGonagall, Lily Potter, and we're-"

Lupin's head snapped up. "Who was that last one?" he asked keenly.

"...Lily Potter. Yes, she was brought back from the dead. Yes, it violates all known laws of magic. No, I don't know how she did it, but..." He trailed off when he saw Lupin go suddenly white.

"Oh... M-Merlin..." he choked out, his face a mask of sudden, existential horror. He looked up at Snape. "I was... I... was..."

Then it clicked. "You died, too?"

Lupin nodded slowly. "Tonks and me both. In... the Second Wizard War." He bit his lip. "How?" he asked simply.

"I don't know. It's just something she does, I suppose." He paused. "She wants everyone to have a happy ending."

"That's... stupid!" Lupin growled-and it was a true growl, Snape noticed, the sort of growl that comes from a savage predator. Hoo boy. "After something like this, how can she expect people to have a happy ending, after _he_ took over the wizarding world, and the war... and... and..."

"Harry suggested you would be able to help us, so I need you to keep it together." Snape said.

Lupin looked up at Snape, and too the latter's alarm Lupin's eyes had gone yellow. Snape's eyes widened, and he did the only thing he could think of.

"_Heel!_" he commanded.

Lupin relaxed noticeably, and he closed his eyes, shaking his head. "Dammit," he muttered. "I'm... not usually this close to the surface so far from the full moon."

"I'll brew you one of your potions if need be," Snape said.

Lupin shook his head. "No," he said. "I've been fighting this most of my life. I can manage." He sighed, apparently finding his lycanthropic happy place. "I assume you're after other reinforcements as well?"

"I am. I was headed for the dungeons when I found you and Tonks... er..."

Lupin raised his eyebrows. "...'Er'?"

"...Getting on in the corner." _Like horny teenagers_, he did not add.

Lupin reflected on this, and then went bright red. "Yes. I... suppose we were." He cleared his throat and got to his feet. "To the dungeon, then?" he asked brightly, changing the topic with all the grace of an ostrich on roller skates.

"Yes," Snape agreed, electing to throw the man a bone. "To the dungeon."

* * *

Snape absolutely knew what he expected when he approached the stone wall that led into the Slytherin dormitories, having traveled this route many times before, and a poster of Cedric Diggory with his shirt off was not amongst his expectations. The bottom of the poster read "TWILIGHT", for reasons that Snape could not fathom. The poster blew a kiss to the two wizards.

"Uh, Snape...?" Lupin ventured.

Snape cradled his forehead in his hands. "No. Not normal. Absolutely not normal. I would have thought that Slytherin would at least...

"What's the password?" Poster-Diggory asked.

"Belladonna berries," Snape said, and the wall ground open.

Inside the Slytherin dungeon, things went quickly from bad to worse. While Snape had held no illusions about the comeliness of his students-Slytherins tended to come from Pureblooded families, who of late had become notoriously inbred-he'd only considered them slightly below-average in appearance in general, with a few individuals who'd been particularly blessed by the Puberty Fairy and would grow up to be decently attractive men and women. However, in the Slytherin Common Room, he found a lot of supernaturally beautiful teenagers lounging about in the sorts of fashions Muggles would have described as Goth, with their school robes augmented by long black capes with batlike vampire collars, black lipstick (both sexes), heavy, runny eyeliner (likewise), and black nail polish (_mostly_ the girls). in the center of it all, surrounded by a coven of Gothic Lolita vampiresses, sat Draco Malfoy, whose weaselish features had been moderated into the refined aristocracy his father bore. He had an arm around each of two girls, and he was shirtless, looking about as lean and wiry as a Quidditch Seeker would be expected to be.

Snape and Lupin stared in horror at the tableau.

"I think I'm going to throw up," Lupin said.

"What. The hell. Did she do. To my House?" Snape asked numbly. His brain simply refused to comprehend what he was seeing and logic ran giggling into the night with its underpants on its head. Snape put a hand over his eyes, and took a deep breath. He looked back at Draco Malfoy, Teenaged Pimp.

"Malfoy!" Snape called.

"Yes, Professor?" The voice was undeniably Malfoy's, but the tone was a lot smoother than the boy had ever used, especially in the last two years.

"I need to speak with you in private. Immediately."

"Of course, Professor," Malfoy said immediately, with a blindingly white smile as he extracted himself from the pile. "Have I been a bad boy? Do you wish to give me a spanking?"

-_don't faint don't faint don't faint don't faint stay calm don't faint-_

"Just come over here. This is an important matter." Snape kept his voice as level as he could manage, although every fiber of his being wanted to drop a fireball in the middle of the room and incinerate the _wrongness_ there. Sweat beaded on his forehead as he balled his hands into fists.

When Pimp Draco drew level with Snape and Lupin, Snape put a guiding arm around the boy's shoulders and led him out of the Slytherin Dungeon.

"What did you want to talk to me about?" Malfoy asked, after Diggory had closed behind them.

Snape pulled out a detention slip with shaking fingers. "For... for associating with people who don't know what real vampires arte, for committing acts of aggravated pimping, and for inviting me to spank you in public-_detention!_" He pushed the detention slip into Malfoy's hand and watched the boy's head clearing. He blinked several times, looked at Snape, looked at the poster now covering the entrance to his House, looked at Lupin, and finally looked down at himself.

Naturally he screamed, so loud that his voice cracked.

"_Why the __**hell**_ _am I wearing leather trousers?_" he shrieked.

Then he took off running at a dead sprint.

* * *

End of Chapter 5.


End file.
